Everything You Really, Really Didn't Want to Know about the Steubenville Rape Case

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've heard something or other in the past month about a horrifying gang-rape case out of Steubenville, Ohio, involving two of the town's star football players, an inebriated out-of-town girl, and an alarming number of adults willing to defend the boys and blame the girl. (Because: football! Is there anything more important?)

Actually, if you have been living under a rock, consider yourself lucky, because this case just gets uglier with every new bit of information. With the juvenile-court date approaching in early February and online activists (both masked and not) stepping up to protest the city's handling of the case, there's going to be even more to parse in the coming weeks. So here's a primer on the events.

• In December, the New York Times ran a lengthy piece titled "Rape Case Unfolds Online and Splits City," setting out the basics of the case and painting a picture we've all come to know a little too well—a small town that lionizes its teen football stars and whose residents are far more concerned with how this crime will affect the boys' lives than with, well, the fact that they committed a crime. The piece quoted Big Red assistant coach Nate Hubbard suggesting that the victim made up the entire story, saying:

"The rape was just an excuse, I think.... What else are you going to tell your parents when you come home drunk like that and after a night like that?".... "She had to make up something. Now people are trying to blow up our football program because of it."

• As the blog Mommyish reports, some of the parents of the accused have made statements via social media that are equally disturbing and victim-blamey.

• The blogger who really broke the case for the mainstream media was Alexandra Goddard of Prinniefied.com. Once those involved in the case knew that the victim and her parents had come forward, they set about deleting evidence of the crime—tweets, photographs, and videos taken during the night's proceedings, many of which left no doubt that a rape had occurred. Goddard's screen shotshave ensured that social media evidence of the rapes can't be covered up. Prinniefied.com continues to cover the case, with a timeline of events and video of news coverage.

• And then hacking collective Anonymous got involved. Last week, the vigilante Anonymous offshoot known as KnightSec publicized a 12-minute video of Michael Nodianos, a former Steubenville high-school student and once and future awful person, laughing and joking about the rapes, seemingly while they were occurring. If you don't have the stomach to watch this douchecanoe amuse himself, I'll nutshell it for you: He says things like "They raped her harder than that cop raped Marcellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction," and says that the victim is "Deader than Trayvon Martin." Nodianos currently attends Ohio State University, where students and others are calling for his expulsion.

• "Occupy Steubenville" protests have garnered the case even more notice in the past week. Alison Kilkenny writes at the Nation about the demonstrations, launched by Anonymous to hold county sheriff Fred Abdalla accountable for allegedly shielding the two defendants from deeper investigation by Steubenville police because of his friendship with the high school's football coach.

• Steubenville itself has become the subject of reflection and anger by current and former residents. Former porn star Traci Lords, who was raised in Steubenville, guested on Roseanne Barr's radio show to talk about her rape at the age of 10, and the culture of "maschismo" in the football-obsessed city. A current Steubenville resident sent a message of support to the protestors, noting that her own rape in 1995 had been belittled by sheriff Abdalla as the result of "asking for a good time."

From the blog spot about Michael whatzizface: "one also has to wonder, irrespective of how distasteful or alarming Nodianos’ comments and views are, should he necessarily be punished for expressing them, no matter how palatable the majority of us finding them?"
YES. YES HE FUCKING SHOULD. Because what he said was not okay. Because he has a right to free speech to the point it infringes on someone else's rights. He doesn't get to say whatever he wants and never face consequence. He has the right to say offensive things, yes, but others have the right to be offended, which means the right to free speech COMES WITH RESPONSIBILITY. FFS. No wonder we have rape culture. It's as if the right to be a misogynist asshole is more important than the right to live in a society that teaches its citizens to respect one another.
Man I've got to go kick stuff now.

I love that his comments are public and circulating. They will follow him into his adult life out of college as he interviews for jobs, etc. Just like the rape will follow that girl. Hopefully she will find peace and live a happy life. And I truly hope Michael Nodianos name never gets forgotten. He witnessed the rape happening. Joked about it. He deserves to pay for his involvement. Absolutely.

How is arresting 10,000 people going to help out this rape victim? Chill out. The two rapists were convicted, and both will be registered as sex offenders for the rest of their lives. Those people in that picture as almost as pathetic as any potential witnesses to that heinous behavior the night of the rape.

Your response is typical of the American demagogue, knee-jerk, emotion-over-intellect response. You don't just arrest everyone in the world, and that will solve the problem. That's what leads to America being The Incarceration Nation. There is no law saying you have to intervene during a crime. If that was the case, hundreds of people in Sandy Hook would be arrested for not bum-rushing Adam Lanza.

While Michael Nodianos may be an immature idiot who went on a drunken rampage that was repulsive to all, he's not guilty of any crime for doing so. He's guilty of being an idiot and guilty of having a moral compass that's beyond sickening. But enough with the "let's lock everyone up" HLN mob mentality.

Mr. Weber. firstly, the punishment is not fitting. secondly, forgiving complacency is a ridiculous consideration. it is not HLN mentatlity, it is common sense and an act of justice. having read your post, it is you who's moral compass is disoriented. perhaps if your daughter or family memeber or someone else you cared for was the victim here you would not be so sweeping with your removed forgiveness.

lastly - a question for you, if Adam Lanza had a sidekick blogging about the terrible rampage as it ocurred (in other words, witnessing it and doing nothing to stop it) is he only guilty of being an idiot and free from prosecution?

Every kid who was there, who witnessed these rapes and did nothing to stop them, should be convicted as accomplices. I'm pretty sure that's how crime works. If that means you jail the football team, then that is what you do.

I'm just as angry and disgusted as anyone else but we can't wish rape on anyone. Even if these boys are the definition of garbage.
Good new though, the animal posted in the video no longer attends Ohio State.

Violence is their language, not ours. The adrenaline of fresh outrage is too much like the adrenaline of their hatred. In any case, thank god for the internet...it seems to have done a world of "good" in opening the discussion on topics like rape, and creating a vibrant forum for support of those who have suffered at the hands of others.

Posted by European thoughts (not verified) on January 9, 2013 - 3:32am

McNamara (quote #1): "The takeaway from all of this is, that Michael is a really good kid, from a really good family, who did a really dumb thing!"
Let me ask you here: If Nodianos is a really good kid, from a really good family, what the hell do you teach your children? Hearing of (or watching) a rape and not taking up the phone and calling 911 is bad enough. But no empathy with the victim at all does not show a good kid, does it? What kind of upbringing can create such a monster?

McNamara (quote #2): "The video was recorded or made on August 12 2012 at a friend of Michael´s home. It´s not the home where the alleged sexual assaults claimed to have occured. It is a completely different location..."
Micheal Nodianos (quote 3min 50s from the 12 min-video): "Right now, what they are doing: They´re trying to help a dead girl..." This implicates, that the girl is still around (maybe on the lawn in front of the house) and since this monster was using present tense most of the time in the video, you can be quite sure, that the rape (quote Nodianos) was going on just moments before the video was recorded.

But Nodiano is not investigated? Not a witness? Not charged?

It seems, like all of those, who said, that Nodiano was not around, just wanted to save their own asses. Because otherwise, there would be a guy, who was talking about a bundle of crimes not only from hearsay. This seems to be a almost perfect cover-up story...

So many commonalities in the two cases! High school boys out of control, teenage football stars, brutal rape of young women who are completely helpless, and the protection these guys get after behaving badly...horribly in fact. That's pretty damn empowering to a young, sick, sadistic boy, it creates monsters when they become adults. If it takes a village to raise up good citizens, there is something very wrong with these guys "village." Something very wrong with a coach who helps cover up this crime, and why is he not charged as an accessory after the fact, as it is well documented that he instructed his "team" to delete evidence?
Strange how the law doesn't really work and people really have no personal protection, victims don't have rights or protection, and rape victims are blamed for getting raped. Are we that barbaric?

The really disturbing part of this case is the fact that the victim's girlfriend had to talk her into going to the first party. Supposedly the victim was going to a volleyball party and her friend persuaded her to do otherwise and she was immediately drugged by a drink given to her in the vehicle. Where is the girlfriend in all of this? Was she complicit to what happened to her friend? Who does this kind of thing to anyone let alone your friend? There is chatter out there that two of the parties they "carried" her to were at assistant coaches houses where as one did nothing and the other told them to leave because they didn't want any part of it. Seriously? What about the prosecuting attorney recusing themselves to a special prosecuting team because of some personal connection to all of this? This stinks so bad of of small town good ole boys that rotten fish smell better. The sad part of it is that the victim will be the one who is publicly tried and destroyed because we honor the constitution and maintain "innocent until proven guilty". I ask everyone of the wittnesses and/or participants to this heinous crime: how would you feel if this were your sister or daughter? To have her so physically brutalized and then unceremoniously dumped on your front lawn and then pissed on saying "some people deserve to be peed on". I know how I would feel if this were my daughter: justifiable homocide.

let's take a tip from inglorious bastards and either cut, brand, or tattoo the letter R or any other figure to signal to the world that these guys are rapists. That way it will be as hard for them to forget about it as it will be for the victim.

let's take a tip from inglorious bastards and either cut, brand, or tattoo the letter R or any other figure to signal to the world that these guys are rapists. That way it will be as hard for them to forget about it as it will be for the victim.

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I have read and watched so much about this case. I have not read a whole lot about the adults in this case being held accountable. Where were/are all of the parents? How is it possible for them all to allow this kind of culture- not just the rape, but the parties, drinking and driving, and unsafe sex? You can't tell me that they don't know what's going on when their son comes home the morning after reaking of booze, and possibly covered in his own vomit and other people's body fluids. I think the parents and other adults involved should be held accountable for not teaching their children how to be safe and respectful of themselves and others. These boys are in a way victims too- they are spoiled brats who clearly have never been taught respect and the consequences of not having any. Anonymous is pretty cool to lend a hand, but what about leaking the names of the parents, and not the children. Why has this culture been allowed to be so common in this town? I'm guessing this was not the first wild party where girls were taken advantage of and moms and dads had to pay a carpet cleaner for their home and cars. "Boys will be boys" is an ancient ideal, and we need to focus on are parents being parents? Are police chiefs being police chiefs? Are teachers being teachers? And who are the mentors? I'm not saying that these boys shouldn't be held accountable, but I am saying that some cultural re-training should be in place. We lock up too many sex offenders who simply need therapy, education, and appropriate mentors. I hope it's not too late for these boys to learn a valuable lesson instead of just having their lives thrown away into the legal/prison system. Most of all, I hope the adults involved can learn their lesson as well- Be a parent, mentor, teacher. Don't be so damned lazy when it comes to raising children.
-danijoy

I grew up near Steubenville so I've been reading about and discussing this whole despicable nightmare much more than is probably healthy.

One thought I keep coming back to: if we understand, with a fair amount of evidence to support it, that using social media can cause severe consequences in the same way that driving a car can have severe consequences, then why not require a social media license?

Like, you can't use it at all until you've reached a certain age. No Facebook. No Twitter. No Tumblr. No YouTube. Nothing. And you'd have to pass a basic communication competency test in order to get that license.

Sure, it's a little bit crazy. And it could serve to punish some particularly brilliant kids who wouldn't be able to build platforms for sharing their music, writing, design, etc.

But if the norm is that callous (or even reprehensible) behaviour is made easier to do, distribute, emulate, etc...then why not take some kind of drastic action? 'Cause what happened to this poor girl is merely an extreme example of what we keep seeing kids do to each other every day. They take such twisted pleasure in ruining each other. It makes no sense.

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Reading and listening to all that I have about this case, it has become apparant that this poor girl was most definitely not the first victim to have suffered at the hands of these pigs. Due to the rampant corruption in Steubeville, women have been getting raped, and denied justice there for many many years. Adult actress, Traci Lords was raped at the age of 10, by a 14 year old boy in Steubenville, and so was her mother before her. Time to bring the good 'ole boys down and expose this cesspitt of a town for what it is.

How is arresting 10,000 people going to help out this rape victim? Chill out. The two rapists were convicted, and both will be registered as sex offenders for the rest of their lives. Those people in that picture as almost as pathetic as any potential witnesses to that heinous behavior the night of the rape.

Your response is typical of the American demagogue, knee-jerk, emotion-over-intellect response. You don't just arrest everyone in the world, and that will solve the problem. That's what leads to America being The Incarceration Nation. There is no law saying you have to intervene during a crime. If that was the case, hundreds of people in Sandy Hook would be arrested for not bum-rushing Adam Lanza.

While Michael Nodianos may be an immature idiot who went on a drunken rampage that was repulsive to all, he's not guilty of any crime for doing so. He's guilty of being an idiot and guilty of having a moral compass that's beyond sickening. But enough with the "let's lock everyone up" HLN mob mentality.

Kneejerk re-examination: It took me a while to research beyond mob action mentality and come to my own conclusions on the Steubenfield rape case events and conviction of a mechanical rape of a 16 year old girl by a 16 year old boy and a 17 year old boy. a. The girl lied to her parents about going to a sleepover and was intoxicated already when she went to see the 16 year old boy at a party. The 17 year old boy was a close friend of the 16 year old boy. The girl and everyone else continued to drink at the #1 house until they were told to leave by the arriving parent. Other girls tried to get the intoxicated girl to go with them instead of the boys, including her girlfriend who had brought her. She went with the boy she had come to be with and was kissing him in the back seat of a car etc. They arrived at house #2 where they continued to drink secretly and the parent finally came downstairs and told everyone to leave but the girls who were sleeping over. The girl, once again left with the two boys over the objections of the girls who wanted her to stay at the house with them. The girl went outside where she threw up on her blouse and removed it sitting on the curb. All 3 then went to house #3 where the girl was photographed semi to unconscious being mechanically fingered by the boy she had wanted. But his friend was also photographed doing the same thing. These photographs were sent to other students. The girl woke up the next day and did not remember anything but it became a choice of criminality eventually by the district attorney and police who at first refused to prosecute. In big capital letters I would like to state: 'THIS OCCURRED ON A SATURDAY NIGHT WITH NO CONSIDERATION BY THE CHILDREN OR THE PARENTS OF ANY OF THE CHILDREN AND OF THE 3 HOUSES THAT THE NEXT DAY WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A HOLY DAY FOR CHRISTIANS TO GO TO CHURCH AND KEEP LEARNING HOW TO WORSHIP AND BEHAVE TOWARDS EACH OTHER. THERE IS NO INDICATION THAT ANYONE HAD BEEN TAUGHT ENOUGH TO CARE FOR EACH OTHER SO THIS INCIDENT COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED. Due to Media frenzy, the 16 year old was convicted and given one year in jail and listed as a sexual offender for life. He was also given another year for photographing the act and passing it on to others. The 17 year old was given one year in jail and listed as a sexual offender. The victim was never charged with illegally drinking while under the legal age to do so, or possessing illegal substances.
What would have been the outcome if the night had ended early, so everyone could worship the next day?

Hopefully the legal process for this rape case is still on the right track amidst all the media publicity. It tends to get out of control when there are so many prosecutors (ie. the public). I wonder how many are really aware of the laws revolving around a rape charge – the elements, etc. Certainly worth checking out…